Xbox is cutting Game Pass prices and removing launch-day Call of Duty games

Xbox has announced price cuts for Game Pass Ultimate and PC Game Pass and removed day-one Call of Duty game launches from the service.

Starting today, Game Pass Ultimate will cost $22.99 / £16.99 per month, down from $29.99 / £22.99. PC Game Pass will now cost $13.99 / £10.99 per month, down from $16.49 / £13.49.

Xbox stated that Call of Duty games will no longer be made available on Game Pass Ultimate or PC Games on day one, and will instead be added “during the holiday season (about a year later)”. Existing Call of Duty games already available on Game Pass will continue to be available.

This marks a surprising policy change for Microsoft, which paid $68.7 billion for Call of Duty parent Activision Blizzard in 2023 and fought a years-long legal battle against regulators focused on the future availability of the franchise.

The price cut comes shortly after Microsoft’s newly appointed head of gaming, Asha Sharma, told employees that Game Pass had become too expensive for consumers. Just six months ago, Microsoft increased the price of its top Game Pass tier by 50% to $30 / £23 per month (and Tuesday’s cut doesn’t represent a full reversal of this rise).

Commenting on the news on Tuesday, Sharma wrote: “Game Pass Ultimate has become too expensive for too many players… We’ll keep learning and evolving Game Pass to better match what matters to players.”

According to a Bloomberg report, last year’s Game Pass price rises were partly influenced by lost premium sales of Call of Duty games – reporting that is seemingly corroborated by the news that new launches will no longer appear day-one in Game Pass.

According to Bloomberg’s sources, Xbox gave up “more than $300 million in sales” of Call of Duty on consoles and PCs last year, due to users playing the games on Game Pass instead.

Commenting on Tuesday’s price cuts, The Game Business editor Christopher Dring said the decision was likely also influenced by struggling subscriber growth ahead of the release of Forza Horizon 6, which is launching first on Xbox consoles in May. Microsoft hasn’t released Game Pass subscriber numbers since 2024, when the service had 34 million users.

“The racing title, from UK studio Playground Games, is currently the third most-wishlisted game on Steam with nearly 2.7 million wishlists. That looks set to be a key title,” he wrote.

“But as I said last week, Xbox Game Pass is struggling for growth and it isn’t delivering on that initial dream Microsoft had back in 2018 when it started putting brand new titles into the service. This price drop is unlikely to solve that, and I fully expect bigger changes, and perhaps a more flexible service, to follow.”

2024’s Call of Duty, Black Ops 6, was the first to launch day-and-date on Xbox Game Pass. Although early results were positive, with Microsoft declaring it the biggest CoD launch ever in terms of players, the game saw a sharper post-launch decline than usual.

Game Pass appeared to impact premium sales of last year’s game, Black Ops 7, more significantly, with launch sales down more than 60% in some markets. In the US, Black Ops 7 was the fifth best-selling game of the year – the lowest a Call of Duty game has placed in nearly 20 years.

Game Pass’s Essential and Premium tiers of Game Pass will remain $9.99 / £6.99 and $14.99 / £10.99, respectively. The Essential tier offers more than 50 games, as well as online multiplayer and the cloud streaming.

Premium offers more than 200 games, with new first-party games joining within 12 months of launch. Cloud streaming has shorter wait times, too.

The most expensive tier, Ultimate, offers more than 400 games with new first-party games available on day one, as well as subscriptions to Fortnite Crew, EA Play, and Ubisoft+ Classics. Cloud streaming also offers the shortest wait times and the best-quality streams.

The PC tier is a cut-down version of Ultimate, which offers a PC-only library of “hundreds” of games, as well as EA Play membership and first-party games on day one.